Greensboro, N.C. -- The minute hand on the clock skipped past 5:09 p.m. with Scott Shafer nowhere in sight. It was the last media session on the last day of the Atlantic Coast Conference Football Kickoff, and the league's newest head coach was late.

Waiting for him, seated in gray chairs around a circular table cloaked by a white tablecloth, was a small contingent of media composed of mostly familiar faces.

Four of the writers were from Syracuse. One was a reporter covering Maryland filling in for a writer from Syracuse. The rest formed a hodgepodge of curiosity that stuck around for a question or two and then moved on. The group numbered no more than 10 in total.

After a few minutes, Shafer hustled in and made a crack about being unable to resist the Chick-fil-A sandwiches that were recently laid out in the hallway for coaches and reporters to snack on. He wore a navy blue Syracuse polo with bands of white stripes, navy blue pants, brown dress shoes and a black G-Shock watch with orange lettering on his left wrist.

He looked like the 13 other ACC coaches in attendance.

It was Shafer's first foray into the white-hot media spotlight that comes with being a head coach in a power conference. He had done plenty of interviews from January to the present, but never with the microscopic intensity of more than 100 media members in the same place at the same time. This was his first real test, his welcome-to-the-ACC moment, his induction into the head coaching fraternity with recorders and cameras and flashbulbs hawking his every move.

He would be watched, all of his mannerisms assessed and scrutinized.

What set Shafer apart from his new colleagues, what truly portrayed him as the league's rookie, was the olive green piece of paper he brought with him to the table. The paper, folded in thirds and with a triangular piece cut out of the top center, was Shafer's cheat sheet. His lifeline to a new conference.

Using a blue felt-tip pen Shafer, or one of the members of the athletic communications staff that accompanied him on the trip to the Grandover Resort, had formulated a play card of the ACC. The names of each of the leagues coaches -- first initial followed by last name -- were written on the left side of the paper. On the right, a list of Syracuse's key players broken up by side of the ball and position. Names of key players on other teams were included as well.

It was, quite frankly, the most obvious sign that Shafer is new to the head coaching fraternity and that Syracuse, along with Pittsburgh, is the shy teenager in the corner at the high school formal. They're in the building, but they haven't hit the dance floor yet.

As the interview sessions in Greensboro progressed, it became clear that the rest of the ACC media has very little interest in, or knowledge of, Syracuse. On Sunday, when center Macky MacPherson and defensive tackle Jay Bromley fielded questions in the same round-table setting as Shafer, the cluster of reporters around them featured mostly Syracuse media. And the outsiders that did wander over asked almost exclusively generic inquiries about joining a new conference. Or Drew Allen. That's about it.

One media member -- he apologized for potential ignorance beforehand -- even asked MacPherson if he was related to the former SU head coach Dick MacPherson. The question elicited cackles from the two Syracuse athletic communications staffers sitting behind the table.

Shafer's session Monday yielded the same off-on-an-island sensation. He was scheduled to meet with reporters from 5:09 p.m. to 6 p.m. before boarding a flight back to Syracuse. But Shafer, who demands that his players be on time for meetings and practices as a display of respect and character, was the last coach to arrive and the first coach to leave.

It felt strange.

After he arrived, the predictable cascade of questions about the quarterback position, Jerome Smith -- Smith seemed to be the only SU player not named Drew Allen that other writers were familiar with -- and being a first-year head coach. But once those queries were exhausted, Shafer was left staring at only a handful of local writers who made the trip down from Syracuse.

Of the 45 minutes Shafer spoke, about 30 or 35 of them were spent with just The Post-Standard/syracuse.com and The Daily Orange at the table.

The interview sessions with coaches were divided into waves, and Shafer shared the room on Monday with Jimbo Fisher of Florida State, David Cutcliffe of Duke and Dave Doeren of North Carolina State. Predictably, Fisher was swathed by reporters that circled him like rings on a tree. Cutcliffe, known for his quick wit and infectious sense of humor, had a flock as well.

But it was the crowd around Doeren, along with the way he conducted himself, that personified the difference between Shafer and his new colleagues. At 6:04 p.m. on Monday, four minutes beyond the end of the media session and with many writers having already retreated to the press room to file their stories, Doeren still commanded a crowd of more than a dozen reporters. Thirty feet to the right sat Fisher, flanked by at least 16 reporters.

At Shafer's table there sat two reporters, myself and Nate Mink, dividing up our content to determine who would write what. Shafer had already left.

In his interview session he had been polite and friendly for the 45 minutes or so that he was present, but he lacked the emotional gusto that has won over so many Syracuse fans to date. His voice was hoarse, he went through one full bottle of water and then started another, he looked and sounded tired after two days replete with dozens of interviews consisting of hundreds of questions. Sue Edson, assistant director of athletics for communications at Syracuse, said Shafer had done interviews from midmorning all the way through to his meeting with print reporters around dinner time.

Print and broadcast media are kept separate at these events, and one medium does not see the interviews conducted by the other. I heard Shafer was lively in earlier sessions with ESPN and others, so perhaps it was just this final interview that was uncharacteristic.

Yet the coaches around him, and I took careful notice of Doeren, also a first-year ACC coach that was seated at the table to Shafer's left, captivated larger groups from start to finish and did not leave early. Doeren was energetic and demonstrative, fielding questions from a contingent ranging in size from a dozen to 20. His audience, like everyone else's, fluctuated, but the mean was always double that of Shafer.

As Shafer's media throng dwindled and a flight back to Syracuse was a little more than two hours away, an athletic communications staff member from SU approached the table a little before 6 p.m. and said Shafer had time for one more question. He answered, stopped for a quick on-camera interview with ESPN, fielded a final follow-up question from The Post-Standard and then said his goodbyes.

With his media responsibilities done, he folded the green cheat sheet back into thirds and stowed it away. He made the walk across the interview room to the door and exited.